Over at ThinkChristian, I take the opportunity to sketch “what a comprehensive Christian response to the crisis of public and private debt might look like.” I focus “on five main areas: the individual, familial, ecclesial, economic, and political.” This is a brief and preliminary set of questions and observations.

But even so, I think even just provisional attempts to evaluate our values shows us that “the problems we face are far more than political – and far deeper than merely political solutions can hope to solve.”

Looking forward to seeing you work through these questions. Judaism and Islam both have long histories of theological discussion of debt but for the last 200 years there has been little work on this by Christian theologians. There is a long tradition of prohibiting the charging of interest in all three faith traditions, will you be wading in on that debate?

http://www.jordanballor.com/ Jordan Ballor

Dan, usury is an interesting topic, and one we’ve done a fair bit of work on. For starters, I’d recommend my introductory essay to the translation we did of the reformer Wolfgang Musculus, including his treatise on usury:

The upshot is that a position on charging interest was not a confessional issue in the Reformation, in the sense that people fell out on both sides of the question from a variety of traditions. Of course Aristotle’s claim about the sterility of money was debated in as well. In modern terms, once you have fiat money and the reality of inflation, I think it’s a real question at least a minimal level of interest is compatible with lending without gain, in the sense that over a period of time the real value of money declines. So getting $1.05 back for a loan given two years ago might not be lending at a gain, even if it is lending at interest.

http://www.jordanballor.com/ Jordan Ballor

Dan, usury is an interesting topic, and one we’ve done a fair bit of work on. For starters, I’d recommend my introductory essay to the translation we did of the reformer Wolfgang Musculus, including his treatise on usury:

The upshot is that a position on charging interest was not a confessional issue in the Reformation, in the sense that people fell out on both sides of the question from a variety of traditions. Of course Aristotle’s claim about the sterility of money was debated in as well. In modern terms, once you have fiat money and the reality of inflation, I think it’s a real question at least a minimal level of interest is compatible with lending without gain, in the sense that over a period of time the real value of money declines. So getting $1.05 back for a loan given two years ago might not be lending at a gain, even if it is lending at interest.